City blocks release of Cicilline emails

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The City of Providence is blocking the public from seeing any email messages sent and received by former Mayor David Cicilline during his final two years in office.

Assistant City Solicitor Amy Crane denied Target 12's request to see Cicilline's emails from 2009 and 2010, a period when the city's finances deteriorated into what his successor has termed a "category five" fiscal emergency.

Crane cited a provision of Rhode Island's public records law that allows the government to seal "correspondence of or to elected officials with or relating to those they represent and correspondence of or to elected officials in their official capacities."

"Therefore, because David Cicilline was an elected official and his email account was used to send and/or receive correspondence in his official capacity as Mayor, your request is respectfully denied," Crane wrote in a letter last week. The denial arrived less than 48 hours after the request was sent.

• Nesi: A closer look at RI's public records law

The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled in 2004, however, that a government body can choose to release documents even if the public records law allows them to be kept under wraps.

The law's provisions do “allow public agencies to withhold documents," the justices wrote, "but do not require withholding.” In other words, a public body can release documents if they wish to do so.

Mayor Angel Taveras refused a request to reverse Crane's decision and release the emails. "It is the job of the city solicitor's office to respond to [public records] requests, and the mayor trusts the solicitor's office to make these legal decisions on a daily basis," spokesman David Ortiz said in a statement.

Through a spokeswoman, Cicilline declined to comment on the matter.

Taveras' decision to seal his predecessor's e-mails contrasts with what took place earlier this month in Alaska, where the state released 24,199 pages of emails that former Gov. Sarah Palin sent and received during her tenure.

Steve Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Rhode Island chapter and a vocal critic of the state's public records law, said even he was surprised by the city's blanket refusal to release a single one of Cicilline's emails.

"To say that merely because a document was made in the elected official's capacity as an official it should be exempt is not only troubling – it turns open records on its head," Brown said. "Many of those records are precisely what should be open, because they're from or to public officials."

"It's not just Providence," he added. "If every public official interprets the statute in this way, it means literally thousands of documents that affect members of the public on a regular basis can be withheld from review."

The city could have embraced a less rigid interpretation of the law and released some emails while sealing others that are exempt, said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, which promotes open government.

"There are plenty of protections in the existing law and no one's proposing removing those," Marion said. "What we want is that when government officials are making decisions about how government works, we want to have access to what those decisions are."

In Cicilline's case, questions have been raised about whether the former mayor handled the city's financial situation correctly, and the city's lack of transparency will make it harder to answer those, Marion said.

"We may never get to the bottom of that because our law is going to prevent both public officials and the media from getting to the bottom of what happened, and – more importantly – to prevent it from happening in the future," he said.

tnesi@wpri.com / twhite@wpri.com